Tag Archives: Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness

Since tomorrow is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I thought I would share with you four articles that I have written in the past focusing on this great Marian celebration, but before I get to those, let me share some experiences I have had with this Marian shrine and title for Our Lady.

Our Lady of Guadalupe holds a special place in my heart ever since I went on a pilgrimage to Mexico City when I was 17 years old. I had the chance to travel to Mexico with people from my parish at the time. It was great experience. I would love to return now knowing so much more about Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego.

When I was teaching high school theology during my first four years, I had an image, that I still have, that hung in my classroom each year. During the first two years, I planned prayer services that focused on the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in my classroom. I was able to locate fake roses which we used to surround the image. See the picture below.

In recent years, I dedicated this website/blog to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe. On the main page, you will see a picture of this Marian image. In my backyard, I also have a white stone statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She oversees the entire yard from her placement. I hope to put roses around the statute soon.

To continue to your reading about Our Lady of Guadalupe, I would encourage you to check-out the aforementioned four articles below –

As I continue to write my own book and finish a writing project on the Blessed Virgin Mary, it came to me that I have never written a post on the books I often turn to when writing. Although I don’t use these five books every week in these posts, they are five books that have become my favorites over the past few years of writing about Mary. If you don’t have these books in your personal library, I would suggest purchasing them.

The order they are in has nothing to do with how I favor these five books. The listing of these books is not like the Top 10 Plays on ESPN each night, they are just a list of five good quality books that focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

1. Introduction to Mary (Mark Miravalle) – this book gives a good systematic approach to Marian theology beginning with Devotion to Mary, Mary in the Scriptures, then focusing on the four dogmas of Mary, the fifth doctrine – Mother of All Peoples, The Holy Rosary, Consecration to Jesus through Mary, Mary in Private Revelation, and concludes with the most common objections and responses on Marian theology. A must read and one that should be in any Catholics library.

2.Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness (William H. Carroll) – as soon as your finish reading this blog post, open up a new tab in your web browser and head directly to Amazon to purchase this book. It’s the best book I have ever read in regards to the great Mexican shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Once you begin reading it, you will not be able to put it down. I have told countless people about this text. They all come back saying the same thing – Wow! What a book! To read my blog post on this book, please go here.

3. Mary and the Fathers of the Church (Luigi Gambero) – this has become one of my go to books as of late because it contains Marian theology given to us by the early Church Fathers. Covering Church Fathers of the Ante-Nicene period and the Post-Nicene period, its vastness of the great early century theologians seems to be unmatched. This is a fantastic book for anyone seeking to know more about Marian theology through the words of the men that followed the Apostles.

4. John Paul II’s Book of Mary (Margaret R. Bunson) – if you read this blog often and know my interests, then you will understand that there is no way a book list would be complete without the writings of Pope St. John Paul II. This is an excellent book for anyone seeking to know the Polish Pope’s thoughts on one of his favorite topics, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Having a devotion to her since he was a young boy in Poland, and even placing the letter “M” on his papal crest, John Paul II wrote extensively on the Blessed Mother in many of his documents, letters, and speeches. This book is a compilation of some of those words.

5. Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons (Mark Miravalle, Editor) – a much thicker book than the rest on this list, but the information this book provides is an excellent resource for anyone seeking a more academic understanding of Mariology. It’s a compilation of essays written by some of the best minds of today focusing on a wide range of Marian topics. When I was in graduate school at Franciscan, one of the essays in this book became the outline to my own thoughts and eventual paper on Mary as the Advocating Queen.

If you have any questions about these books or other Marian books in my personal library, please let me know. As this very moment, I am looking at 30 books that focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary in some capacity. Even with all these books on Mary in my library, I realize everyday the more I think I know, the less I know.

Once my writing projects on Mary are complete and ready for publication, I will release that information on here. Please pray for me.

Since yesterday was the feast day of Saint Juan Diego and Wednesday is the feast day for Our Lady of Guadalupe, I thought I would write about this fantastic book that my friends Michael and Laura shared with me some months ago. The title of the book is – Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of the Darkness. The link will bring you to a website where you can purchase it. If you don’t purchase it, you will regret it. This book is SOOOO good! Once I began to read it, it was not put down (well okay it was, but I read it quickly).

It is an objective account based on historical records written by Dr. Warren H. Carroll. If you are not aware of whom he is, check out the link above. For those of you that live in the United States, he is the founder of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Where many texts about the Physical Conquest of Mexico and the person of Hernan Cortes are often politically driven or written to change the course of history, Dr. Carroll writes a superb book without a hidden agenda. It’s simply a great book that will grab your attention from the first few paragraphs. Read it! You won’t regret it.

Many people know the story of how Our Blessed Mother appeared as a Aztec (Mexican) woman to Saint Juan Diego, but so many don’t know about the years leading up to the visions on Tepeyac Hill. Many don’t know about the horrific sacrifices the Aztecs performed to their demonic gods. This book gives a detailed account of the events that happen from 1487-1548. It not only explains the physical Conquest of Mexico, but more importantly, the spiritual Conquest of Mexico, which is often never told in history books written by secular scholars.

Instead of going into my own detailed account of the book, I am going to leave you with some teasers from the book in the hopes that you will purchase the book and read it for yourself. You will not regret it. It’s a fantastic read and one that will more than likely be read again.

“His name was Cuauhtlatohuac, “he who talks like an eagle.” (An eagle perched on a cactus growing out of a rock, with a snack in its beak, was the symbol of Aztec Tenochtitlan, Cactus Rock.) Approximately forty years later, Cuauhtlatohuac was to be baptized with the Christian name of Juan Diego; and it was to him that the Mother of God, who crushes the Serpent, was to appear on the nearby hill of Tepeyac as Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“When they were ready to go inland, Martin of Valencia and his eleven Franciscan apostles set out on the 200-mile journey to Mexico City, across the mountains and deserts, in thin brown robes, barefoot. For the next two hundred and fifty years, every Franciscan missionary entering Mexico for the first time walked the 200 miles from Veracruz to Mexico City barefoot. It was done when Fray Junipero Serra, the apostle of California, arrived in the eighteenth century.”

“As the people of England went out of the Church Christ founded, the people of Mexico came into it. The consequences to the Church of the loss of England reverberate down the centuries; she has suffered few greater losses in the whole of the Christian era. The consequences to the Church of the conversion of the majority of the population of the New World who live south of the United States still lie mostly in the future. But no part of the world is more Catholic, and few equally so –and that is, above all, the gift of the Virgin of Guadalupe.”